The American Spectator

Reader Mail

No Questions Asked

10.3.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 5)

ROUSH HEARTS CONSERVATIVES
Re: Mike Dooley's letter (under "Right Into My Trap") in Reader Mail's Greenlight Special and David Gonzalez's letter (under "Failure to Communicate") in Reader Mail's Not So Fast:

Mr. Dooley writes: "Thus, unwittingly, Mr. Roush reinforces my point that Liberals are befallen with the psychological malady of projection "where they accuse others of the very attitudes and behaviors they themselves engage." Two paragraphs later, he scribbles: "Unfortunately, Mr. Roush's testimony has that "some-of-my-best-friends-are-black" type flavor to it." Projection, you say Mr. Dooley?

Mr. Dooley asserts: "Not being a Conservative nor living as one, I am not surprised Mr. Roush thinks these stories of Liberal rejection and outrage are vastly overblown if not totally imaginary..." only later to state, "But, as I did, if you pass from being a Liberal to being a Conservative, woe will be unto you." Huh?

According to Mr. Dooley: "Conservatives write that way because they genuinely don't like you. Liberals write that way because they think themselves the very embodiment of reason, decency, sweetness and light." I think, Mike, you have successfully slandered a great number of conservatives and liberals. Has it ever occurred to you that most conservatives and liberals are people of good will who, confident in their philosophical positions, acknowledge areas of agreement, while vigorously and civilly debating their differences in the pursuit of greater understanding?
-- Mike Roush
P.S. David Gonzalez writes: "I offer this difference between liberals and conservatives: Conservatives think that liberals have terrible ideas. Liberals feel that conservatives are terrible people."

To the second part of this formulation, I say nonsense!

IN VAIN
Re: Christopher Holland's letter (under "Brilliantly Flawed") in Reader Mail's Greenlight Special and Daniel Mandel's The Hero of Trafalgar at 250:

When Christopher Holland says, "The Duke of Wellington met [Nelson] during his last visit to London and thought him the most vain and silly, the biggest fool he ever met," he is only giving half the case.

Sir Arthur Wellesley, as he was then, was supposed to meet with Lord Castlereigh. During his wait, "a gentleman, whom from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognized as Lord Nelson," was shown in. And indeed Nelson began talking about himself, rather absurdly.

Then something Wellesley said made Nelson wonder. He got up, went out of the room, and when he came back he was, as Wellington put it, "altogether a different man, both in manner and matter."

And Wellington went on to say, "I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more.... I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man."
-- Joseph T. Major

LADY THATCHER
Re: Jeffrey Lord's post, Who Is David Frum?, on AmSpecBlog:

Regarding Jeffrey Lord's comparison of Sarah Palin to "middle class" Margaret Thatcher, I would point out that Margaret Thatcher had a degree from "elitist" Oxford (and also that the term "middle class" has elitist implications in the UK that it does not have here): "Margaret Roberts attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964" (Source: website of the Thatcher Foundation). Throughout her career, Margaret Thatcher has demonstrated respect for ideas and education. She is no populist, and you would not have caught her claiming to be the British equivalent of "Joe Six-Pack."
-- Cathy

Letter to the Editor

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